Berryman, Corso, and Tuschen

 

The Friends Basement book sale was an occasion to thin out the books around here – many which basically overfill the space, un-re-read.

Said good ‘buy’ to this grimy tome: The Dream Songs (1972) by John Berryman. Before I knew it, I got to thinking.

John Berryman today is probably in the category called cancelled, where he hangs out with Hemingway, the king of cancelled, and others. Like Hemingway his father shot himself, and like Hemingway he would commit suicide, jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis.

Back in his day, pre-1972, he was a hard drinking big-ego professor poet full of confessional angst, in my humble opinion. His songs were an endless song of hisself in an un-understanding world. Great bearded poet who spilled out his guts at poetry readings, and later, probably, fell into the punch bowl, to be saved for a while, in my dream song,  by a caring co-ed. You see in his poems his battle with drink, which I should say does demand some sympathy.

In his writings he is “Henry”. There are love conquerings that today seem to have the scent of chauvinism. His conversations are sometime with Mr. Bones – I guess the same Angel of Death in Bergmann movie of the time. Here’s a song excerpt:

Nothin very bad happen to me lately.

How you explain that? —I explain that, Mr Bones,

terms o' your bafflin odd sobriety.

Sober as man can get, no girls, no telephones,

what could happen bad to Mr Bones?

—If life is a handkerchief sandwich,

 

in a modesty of death I join my father

who dared so long agone leave me.

A bullet on a concrete stoop

close by a smothering southern sea

spreadeagled on an island, by my knee.

—You is from hunger, Mr Bones.

Poor misunderstood John. But he could hold a crowd, and there were some great lines and imaginative vision in his musings. He had connections to Pound, Lowell, Plath. I was glad to find this book in a used book store heap, but over time, it didn’t really resound for me. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

I make fun of the wine swilling poet here – which might surprise my old friends! A poet that can kick over a Gallo gallon at a California reading, or balance a bottle of wine on a mattress like a pillbox hat on Edie Sedwig’s head,  would seem to be  my kind of guy.

I will always revere Gregory Corso as a True Poet and a Wine Drinking Son of a Gun at That. And lord knows he was a mess. My buddy Jeff had the honor to taxi him around Madison back in the day and could attest that ‘wine was on his mind’. At Passim’s in Cambridge, Cecelia and I saw him do a reading where he got so excited that his dentures flew out of his mouth across the stage floor like winged angels of Dionysian poesy. He didn’t miss a Beat! His life was lively art. After the reading in conversation, he said to Cecelia: “Hi ya, doll!” – something we will always recall.

The wine-drinking poet is in opposition to the tweed-wearing poet (think: T.S. Elliot) who is too rational. Poetry is not rational – again, IMHO. The system of rationality is a closed system, has no escape, and finds no new song.

But back to Berryman inexactly. Actually, for me, in my head, the icon John Berryman is ever entangled with that of John Tuschen, who was the leading poet in Madison, Wisconsin when I was an undergraduate at the University there.

Tuschen was a poet of wine. Long hair like Joe Dallesandro. He had a startlingly magnetic presence and turned a poetry reading into a dynamic event. He could be a not-so-cute bundle of trouble, I hear tell, for the poetry organizer. I’m told today his works are among those engraved into sidewalks in Madison, to serve as a permanent memorial.

Tuschen had a set piece. A send-up of John Berryman. He had the growling menace down. And the slurred bravado. A good stage poet is not way different than a good standup comic, me thinks, and these were highlights of a Tuschen reading.

When Berryman died, the poetry community was, naturally, saddened. And Tuschen had to re-work the Berryman bit. It became a tribute to the great poet, but with a pinch of fun. Here is hoping Berryman, Corso and Tuschen are signifying in the other world, and Hemingway too, on the street corner near the river, where “you can jump in the water and stay drunk all the time.” - J. Vaughan